User Reviews by KVR Members for Reason

Last time when i used Reason was about 10 years ago if not more. It was pretty rudimentary DAW back in the past. Lacks in many ways of production. Now we have 8.3 version. What i can say here? Installed demo of it and after 4 days of hard using i can say: "Folks it;s great!". If you're looking new way for production and really good quality instruments (Rack Extension in Reason's paradigm) and don't want to pay extra money for it - this is for you! You can get damn good FXs and synths under 99$. Also great one about Propellerhead Reason is modular system: you can connect almost everything with everything by CV I/O system. That means you have huge modulation possibilities in this DAW. In my mind only NI Reaktor has so much chances for connection inside the program.

Somebody can say that Reason's huge minus is lack of opportunity in VST connection but i will say that this is huge plus! Personally i'm a little bit tired about all this VSTs that we have on market nowadays. One is not working as should work, one is with bug, one is just don't work as should at this DAW and work in another and etc. Also if you want to -re-install your system it will take ages to download all your plugins and register it. On other side folks from Propellerhead offer for us a whole ecosystem where you need to click once and all products will be installed on your machine, ecosystem where all plugins works as it should because they're only for one DAW - for Reason. Stability, fun and intuitive using - that's about Propellerhead Reason.

"Reason is the music software made with one thing in mind: you. And whatever music is on your mind, Reason makes it easier to bring it out. Go faster from good ideas to great music than ever before."

And this words - true ;)

P.S: By my personal taste only one thing i can move to cons of Reason: Sequencer. Don't get me wrong, please. It's good but i want to see things like curves for automation lines (also waveforms ala sin, square, triangle and etc.), folder tracks, proper track delay in +/- ms (you can realize it with ReGroove mixer but this is not as i want to see). Also i miss ability to setup custom shortcuts for my work but i can live with this.

I've used Reason Essentials for all of my music production for a year now. The two main reasons (no pun intended) I decided to go with Reason when I contemplated switching out of Reaper last year were its relative affordability and unique look, namely the so-called Rack Extensions.

Now Reason isn't a DAW in the purest sense. It is, to be more precise, a music production suite. Nevertheless, Reason comes with a selection of stock Rack Extensions and sounds that covers a variety of musical needs. Techno, rap, DnB, ambient, even orchestral or heavy metal - you can do all of it in Reason. And the best thing is that you can only get the Essentials version and still be able to do all of it.

However, even a DAW as versatile as Reason is not without its flaws. Namely, due to its unique Rack Extension format, Reason doesn't support common plugin formats. Thankfully that flaw is partly fixed by the sheer number of additional Rack Extensions available in the Propellerhead Shop. Another downside is that if you don't have access to Internet, you have to run Reason in Demo Mode, which does not allow the opening of files.

Pros:

Relatively affordable.

Great workflow.

Clean and easy-to-use interface.

Comes with a virtual keyboard for those who lack a MIDI controller.

The uniqueness and fun factor of "the rack".

A satisfying selection of stock Rack Extensions and sounds, even in the Essentials version.

The Scream 4 Distortion unit.

Cons:

Lack of VST and other plugin support.

Requires an Internet connection for full functionality, namely being able to open files.

Final verdict:

An excellent music production suite with enough sonic variety to cover almost any genre imaginable, even in the most basic and cheapest edition. Highly recommended for versatile multi-genre musicians.

Reason seems to be one of those love it or hate it tools for most people and sits in a space that's not quite plugin and not quite DAW. Personally I love it, and have used it since version 4, and have seen quite a few changes in that time.

To me, one of the best decisions that Propellerheads made was to consolidate Reason and Record into one tool, as it made no sense to keep them separate. It certainly extends the range of Reason to give it audio capabilities, and it has a very good mixer.

While third party plugin use has never been a feature of Reason, the Props came to a compromise and brought RE functionality to the table. RE may have failed if third parties had not developed for the platform, but when you look at the respected developers creating RE's, you have to realize that Reason is taken seriously as a platform for them to develop for.

At the core of Reason is a variety of tools that can be routed to a mixer as in any other DAW, but with the advantage that you can easily flip your racks around to patch any device to pretty much any other device. If you have no experience of this on other hardware or software there's a learning curve for sure, but once you master this, you really see the strengths of Reason.

I won't go into the details of each instrument on the racks as it would take up too much space, but Reason certainly has a wide range of instruments, covering various types of percussion, synthesizers, samplers and effects. The Props web site is a good place to start if you want to read further into what is included.

A common complaint that I have heard on KVR is that Reason relies on ReWire to communicate with other software. ReWire is not for everyone, but as it is implemented in most major DAWs and is pretty simple to set up, I'm happy with it and have never really had any issues using Reason and Ableton Live side by side. A recent addition is MIDI out, so that really opens up more opportunities with external instrument triggering, and any other uses for MIDI out.

On the downside, Reason does have a very cluttered GUI if you don't have a large monitor, and gets very fiddly on laptops. I think it is a little difficult to learn coming from other DAWs or hardware, but as with any tool, you can learn it over time.

Solid as a rock as far as stability is concerned and very efficient in terms of processor use. Some of the tools might have a bigger processor hit (Kong comes to mind), but for the most part they are very efficient.

I think it is priced very fairly, and upgrades come in at a reasonable price too.

Reviewed By TheOfficialValve [read all by] on 1st December 2013Version reviewed: Any on Windows. Last edited by TheOfficialValve on 1st December 2013.

Propellerhead Reason is probably one of the most versatile tools in the music world you will ever find. This program emulates the classic synthesizer rack, along with a sampler, sequencer and a virtual mixer. Of course, all the standard assets are there, such as MIDI, sampling, blah, blah, blah, and at first glance reason may seem like any other DAW, but look harder and you'll see this is no ordinary software. It includes easy-to-use and professional plug-ins such as Subtractor, Malstrom, NN-19, NN-XT, Thor, Neptune, Sylenth, Alligator, among others. If you have experience with real-world hardware, such as synthesizers, samplers and racks, Reason is probably the most easy to learn for you, considering it is just that, just virtual. And you can connect some real racks and synthesizers in to DAW itself, so you get the same feel you did the first time you took out those real-world tools of the trade, while making it just that much easier. Whether you're a newbie, a professional, or just a guy who wants to make some music like you could with your old sampler, Reason is definitely for you.

Reason 7 is an update that was clearly designed for the musician. I own or have owned Pro tools 8, Studio one 2, FlStudio 11, Reaper 4 and now Reason 7. All have amazing feature sets and each Daw will bring something different to the table. The thing that worries me about these workstations growing and expanding more with every update is that while they are a blast to play with, musicians are being trapped into a web i'm sure we all have been familiar with. Its become too easy to "play" or "learn" or "experiment" with different options, choices, plugins, features, etc. Reason 7 is an update that was clearly designed to get out of the way. Making music is just too easy and too much fun with version 7. Its updates like audio time stretching, parallel processing and visual EQ spectrum's that may seem behind in terms of Daw innovation, but they are almost brilliantly integrated to the point where you almost get the sense Propellerhead are one step ahead of the game. Almost like they see that our options for music making in the Daw world have expanded to the point where us musicians will want a Daw that gets out of the way and just lets us do what we should spend our time doing anyway. Writing and producing our songs. I will continue to work with different workstations for different reasons. That is, if i can pull myself away from having too much music music in Reason 7.

Reviewed By eox08 [read all by] on 13th February 2012Version reviewed: 7 on Windows

I love Propellerhead's Reason! It's what I first started using back in version 3 and still use it to this day with version 6. Highly highly recommend it to anyone that is wanting to do music production. Excellent tool for beginners and the professionals. Reason taught me sound design and what the differences are in different style instruments. I had absolutely no idea what music production really looked like when I first started. In fact, I remember the first time I ran reason and had no idea what I was doing. I didn't have anyone to teach me, only google and youtube, but now I can route my instruments the way I want and my work flow is up to par. Reason is just a great software. Love it.

Latest 6 reviews from a total of 6

Discussion: Active

Discussion

Yes. A great workstation. I'm amazed at how easy is to create any kind of music style when sitting in front of that luxurious infinite stack of Synths and effects including the new Mixer. The audio stretching is impeccable! And the new effects are able to transform beyond recognition (if you so desire) any audio going through them.

I think that Reason now MUST have a decent MIDI OUT instrument, i mean with Bank MSB and LSB, with more than 1 assegnable knob (maybe 16...) because almost every keyboard has more than 128 patch, and I don't want to program bank change msb and lsb into the sequencer, it is very very uncomfortable...